So I knew the game started, not because I glanced at the forum on my phone, but because the forum email is working for the first time since July. If only davean had waited another 12 hours to fix it I might have seen the game started a few hours before I got home and had time to log in and check my role pm, as happened with Fridge mafia. Then I would have had a short euphoric period to envisage that maybe this time the RNG assigned me a mafia role. But alas, I received only a single email notification from Madge so I knew my alignment before I even logged in. Well, perhaps I will gain mason chat and have someone to talk to.

Well that should teach me to read the damn rules properly. I can see why that mistake pinged LaserGuy and I feel like he's town, but give it a rest already. Not that he would, my limited experience says he's a quite persistent fellow.A re-read is probably in order, this discussion has distracted me a little from what other people were saying.

Yes that really did happen that my town->scum reads came out to the alphabetical list with only a minor amount of twisting. And no, I did not intentionally start to imply that I might be the independent in the game, should one exist, but it may help to cover any peculiarities in my posting that come up later.

The story of my life in xkcdmafia:

Tigerlion wrote:Well, I imagine as the game progresses, various people will be getting moody.

BoomFrog wrote:I still have no idea what town moody really looks like.

Why yes, that last post is a load of bullshit. That's part of the reason I don't do the whole probing questions thing. I don't think that deep on the scumreads based on reactions to minor comments; voting patterns and power results yes, but not this kind of thing. Since I'm not good at thinking that way, I don't know how to ask someone else about that same kind of process.

The story of my life in xkcdmafia:

Tigerlion wrote:Well, I imagine as the game progresses, various people will be getting moody.

BoomFrog wrote:I still have no idea what town moody really looks like.

bessie's wild guess is surprisingly accurate for at least my role (I assume), which makes me think it might not be so wild. Unfortunately, if she's the CFO, there's no way I'm getting her lynched. Just have to hope scum kills her, I guess.

Oh well, guess this mentorship might be coming to a premature end. PW will be the default lynch, not much information will be gained from it, and the town will flop around a bit Day 2. Guess PW got busy? Frankly, I'd lynch him in town's shoes at the moment - they don't have strong alternatives (though I haven't been reading as intensely as I would have been if I was a player).

This is weird. I kind of feel like the best play for town is to swing the lynch over to PW and see what happens there. I agree with bessie that it sounds like he's some kind of indie with a killing power.

But... I want to get killed. I don't think it's very likely that PW is going to try to kill me, but having an extra kill around is probably in my best interests. (I also think there's a non-trivial chance that PW is hoping to kill me)

Hmm...

Leaning toward claiming cop D2 on town (or indie, I guess) flip. I've crumbed toward doctor already though, so I'm relying on nobody noticing. Though that involves me correctly guessing a town result on someone plausible. If somitomi flips town, I think I can safely claim a town result on jimbob. Otherwise, I might go with moody. Or go for broke and claim as scum result on wam.

Interesting that wam claims to have been told his flavour is just flavour, which is the complete opposite of what's happened to me. That's really why he's my second choice after Peaceful Whale.

WOWS (nobody alive may read)

Spoiler:

It's funny because this miscommunication has occurred because they asked different questions. Originally upon reading this I was panicking that I'd given them different impressions of how the game worked but it was all based on me responding reasonably to their inquiries:

Jimbob: Is my role PM just flavour or does it have an impact on the game?Me: It is not just flavour.

Wam: The flavour hints I'm a lover, am I a lover?Me: No, you're not a lover.

EDIT:

WOWS

Spoiler:

That was fun. I am rooting for LaserGuy right now, he's playing well with a challenging win condition. Let's see what happens!

I'm writing a supernatural romance novel, it updates the first weekend of every month. You can find it here.

It basically clears Hari unless he did some extreme bussing. As he could easily of switched the lynch to me.

Laser guy looks bad jumping off the PW wagon onto the me wagon.

Maven could be scum coming into the lynch late making sure he has a vote down on his teammate.

If PW turns up town

HAri will look bad and linked to me!

I would still wonder about laser as jumping off a town wagon is a tell in my book.

If people still think I'm scum anyone who voted PW over me would be bad.

If pw turns up indie

No idea as no one went into the lynch with extra knowledge!

To explain my comments about flavour is I had heavy hints about being a lover in the flavour but I asked madge and got told specifically I wasn't.

I am expecting one of laserguy or hari to be the NK target, possibly bessie. Everyone else is has had enough suspicion thrown their way that they could be mislynched. I have picked laser as my watcher target will see what happens!

Also I got the timing wrong, I thought I would be awake at deadline but I was out by 2 hours so woke up to see the deadline having passed.

@Peaceful Whale: there was a love triangle between the CFO (Werewolf, you), the VP (Vampire, jimbob) and the secretary (Human, Hari). If any of you dies (whether by lynch or NK) then the other two become Masons.

From discussion so far Town looks to be in pretty good shape despite the mislynch D1. They now have 2 Masons, scum plans to kill the indie reducing the ambiguity of the setup and the Watcher might even see who performed the kill.

Yeah, Town has two vampires, and scum has the (human) CEO of the company and a changeling IT intern. Just as town has a bunch of NPCs, scum has a bunch of NPCs (the teen vampire hunters who blocked the exits).

Figured you don't need safeclaims if your role is a safeclaim

Oh, and watch my jaw hit the floor when SDK got the entire setup bang-on. Next time guess what all the roles are if you really want to impress us

I'm writing a supernatural romance novel, it updates the first weekend of every month. You can find it here.

The point of the mentoring relationship is not for you two to play as a team but for your mentor to give you advice about how to play, essentially. SDK did great at that IMO, he was offering you ways you could seem townier. I know it must be frustrating to think you could have had perfect reads, but also remember that if you announced them in-game, people would question you on the logic behind your choices and because they were SDK's opinions, not yours, you'd really struggle to justify them and look like scum pulling things out of thin air and then struggling to justify them.

I think if you and SDK are both willing (and the mod too) it might be a good idea to try the mentoring relationship in your next game. I think you could have gotten a lot more out of him by asking questions (like, "these are my reads, what do you think?" and he could ask you questions to help you think more deeply about your conclusions, or something; he could also have given you an idea of the way town would have torn your posts apart, or whatever).

One of the main reasons I asked if you wanted a mentor, actually, is because you asked me some questions that as a mod I couldn't answer but as a human being with mafia experience I would have already known the answer to. I wish you'd asked SDK those questions!

Question, can I actually turn into a werewolf? Does that grant me powers? And what does the love intrest mean? Am I just a vanilla townie?

If I was your mentor and not a mod, I could have answered those questions thus:

Question, can I actually turn into a werewolf? It doesn't look like you can, it's not one of your powers. You might be able to later though, or it might just be flavour since apparently everyone is a supernatural creature of some sort.

Does that grant me powers? Maybe, maybe not. You'll have to see what happens in the game. I think it's odd that the mod said they were trying for no vanilla roles and also that some roles might have hidden mechanics - I think there'll be something that happens later in the game.

And what does the love intrest mean? I'm not sure, I'm guessing there's going to be the other characters mentioned in your role PM in the game, not sure if they're town or scum. Probably if you get your rival for the receptionist killed something good will happen. Maybe if the receptionist is killed first you'll be in trouble. As a mod there's a lot of ways I might have played these roles.

Am I just a vanilla townie?It looks that way for now but I wouldn't count on it staying that way.

I think even that would have helped you understand your role better, but as mod I can't answer those questions that way because you'll take it as confirmation that your power had hidden elements - or I'd be being misleading by saying things that weren't true.

I'm writing a supernatural romance novel, it updates the first weekend of every month. You can find it here.

Yeah, like Madge said, it wasn't my role to play the game for you, only to help you navigate the game. I can tell you generally what to look for, but never what I personally see. I can tell you if your logic seems reasonable, but never if I agree with your read on the whole. It's not just about fairness either - all the best teachers allow their students to make their own mistakes.

I really do think you have potential, PW. Your posts were solid when you got down to it. Hopefully you found some of the advice I gave helpful in knowing what town needs to see from you; I think that is what you most need to work on, and you did get there, just a bit late.

Hi Sabrar, are you talking about me me me? Probably not, because all your spoilers are directed at Peaceful Whale. I want something to read after I am night killed. If you don’t have anything to say about me I’ll be disappointed and I won’t leave you Gojoe spoilers with all my super secret thoughts anymore.

Peaceful Whale, I’m really sorry about lynching you. It’s unfortunate you were gone for two days, I think that really doomed you because it seemed that you disappeared because you had either given up, or perhaps you were waiting for an absent scum partner to bail you out, or for your mentor to advise you. Your content improved a lot on that last day, I could see that you put a lot of effort in to your LaserGuy and wam reads. So what are you discussing in Gojoe? Are you asking a lot of questions so that you will be an even better player (and I’m sure you will be great) in the next game? Or are you saying bad things about me because I lynched you (it’s ok if you are, I’m a terrible person).

I should have gone for wam. He’s testing my meta. The only people that test my meta are scum, and maybe plytho.

somitomi, you did well too, you were suspected but I don’t think you would have been lynched on D1. Please sign up for another game.

Madge wrote: Note that role names and alignments will be revealed but not flavour or power text.

I hope this doesn't mean that there will be absolutely no power info in the flip or in the role name at least.

Just got Bessie's action in my inbox... without looking at it I'm hoping she's going to track Maven, because then everyone except scum will have played "perfectly" - we'll have someone seeing who visits the kill target and someone seeing who the killer visits.

..... oooooo, nope, didn't target the optimal target but her choice of target is nonetheless going to be pretty beneficial.

I'm so excited to see what happens. I'm just waiting on one more night action and then permission from the chatters to end night early.

Working on a job application at the moment (give myself 10% chance of succeeding), so I might end night late if anything tbh. Will need to spend some time writing day start flavour as well. If the kill target stays where it is, I'll need to make sure I write up something really good - the current kill target's species is a mummy, in a bit of a homage to DJ, so I want to make sure it's written well as a kind of love-letter to his past Halloween games!

I'm writing a supernatural romance novel, it updates the first weekend of every month. You can find it here.

Sorry bessie, you're not getting NK-d because your tunneling is misguided. wam is actually your ghoul assistant (so you'll be able to confirm that his role is in the game) but I doubt you will give him townie points for that.

I'd like to learn from you, senpai, so how does the flip mechanic help ensure balance is assured? I was curious about your logic and if you're mentioning it here maybe other peopple would like to learn too!

I'm writing a supernatural romance novel, it updates the first weekend of every month. You can find it here.

It's not necessarily more balanced in this way, however some of the roles are more fun (at least in my mind) if the specifics are not known to the players. This is also the reason why the 'someone gets killed results in someone else getting a new power' is not spelled out in the role pm-s. It is a way of messing with people's expectations, especially after Doctor turned out be scum in Crossover. And that's also why scum/indie got the extra info about there not being Cop/Doc in the setup, however that interaction would need a couple of pages on its own to fully explore. Some additional examples:- scum shouldn't know how the Paranoid Roleblocker works exactly, though they might reasonably guess it.- only scum is aware from the beginning that there are Masons in the game and even they might be wrong about it.- some of Town have info about additional roles being in the game but they have no idea about the exact relationship and whether they can trust them.

All night-actions are in and unlikely to change. Here's the breakdown if you want to understand what happened during N1:

- scum!Maven kills LaserGuy- indie!LaserGuy will be quite happy as being NK-d is his win-condition- scum should also be happy (though they won't know it) as LaserGuy was the only one who would have seen through their false-claims- wam is Watcher, observes LaserGuy and will see that only Maven targeted him- however other scum is moody, being a Framer he will make it look like wam targeted Maven as well- bessie is Tracker, follows wam and she will see him targeting both LaserGuy and Maven- meanwhile jimbob and Hari became Masons with PW's death, however Maven is Mason Finder and happened to target jimbob, so he will know about him

In my wildest dreams I couldn't have predicted that all abilities would come together in such a nice package.

Speculation on what will happen up to N3 (because it's fun):

- with the indie being dead everyone will (rightfully) assume the original 6-2-1 setup.- there is already big suspicion on wam. bessie will be even more convinced as she saw him targeting 2 players, one of them being the NK. However she doesn't want to claim just yet, hoping to utilize her power N2 as well (from her pov if scum!wam is lynched then she essentially becomes Cop because there is only 1 scum remaining to perform the NK)- for the same reason wam will want to claim to assure that scum is lynched (plus Watcher is normally a weaker power so Town doesn't lose as much if he is killed N2)- bessie will poke at him at first asking if there's a secondary aspect to the role. When wam denies this, bessie will be forced to claim Tracker, because she 'saw' wam targeting Maven as well.- meanwhile Maven must simply deny having targeted LaserGuy at all. He doesn't want to give wam credit as a Watcher, plus none of his false-claims really work here (scum knows that the setup contains no Cop/Doc so could theoretically false-claim either, however Doc is unlikely because LaserGuy was killed, Cop is unlikely because there were way better targets than LaserGuy. Theoretically he could claim being Doc and 'suspect' wam being Strongman,however that doesn't explain why wam saw him protecting LaserGuy)- two factors here could influence what happens D2: a) does Maven reply prematurely before bessie's poke and implicate himself somehow, and b) when wam full-claims being the ghoul assistant, will bessie think that this means he's town as well? I doubt both, Maven is an experienced player and bessie's tunneling usually prevents her to see things from the opposite side. No, her theory will be that wam roleblocked Maven to make him appear scummy when he can't produce any night-results.- end-result: wam is lynched D2

N2 jimbob is killed (scum knows wam will flip Town and it will be obvious that Maven will be lynched D3. They need to get rid of confirmed townies, starting with the known Mason)D3 Maven is lynched.N3 has too many moving parts to predict.

I received a notification that Sabrar quoted me, so I guess I can share some more super secret thoughts. That better be more than an empty quote tag, Sabrar.

Sabrar, are you frustrated with me me me because I’ve been gaming the game? I’ve actually been trying really hard not to do so. My setup spec would have been the same for any mod, except for the innocent child part, but I’m pretty sure that you put an innocent child type role in because it seems like in every game you speculate that we have one. My current thought is that there is a role similar to Gopher of Pern’s role in Dark Tower. Wild ass guess, LaserGuy has that role and he may be looking for someone specific to masonize (possibly me from the flavor in my role pm). The part about you providing safe claims, well, the discussion you and I (and BoomFrog) had about it was public, and it also came up again in Refrigerator mafia so I feel it was ok for me to point out.

Some more night thoughts.

bessie wrote:

Peaceful Whale wrote:It says I love the receptionist. So I think if they die, I become a werewolf or something. I was kinda hoping that if they did die, I’d become an Indy(with a win con of killing whoever killer her) or something cool like that. I guess we’ll never know now though. I’ll ask Madge after the game.

How is this role vanilla? I believe there is some truth in this. But serious FoS on anyone that thinks Peaceful Whale currently has a town win condition.

Peaceful Whale, you can skim anything that is flavor and in italics, but always read the rules in the initial post, and any rule clarifications posted in bold by the mod very carefully.

Madge wrote:There are no mechanics that change alignment or win conditions, nothing that does spoiler reading, no "listening" roles, no lying by the mods, and any of the usual stuff that would be considered bastardy.

Yes, I’m the one that asked Madge about alignment/win changing conditions. I asked the same question of YOLOSWAG on N0 in Crossover mafia, and I think he had a very good laugh over it when he replied to me on N0, as he quoted his previous response when he sent me a pm on N3…

I’m interested in seeing if anyone brings this up tomorrow. Should I be more suspicious of LaserGuy for not attacking Peaceful Whale for this, after he spent most of the game attacking somitomi for not reading the rules?

On the very small chance Peaceful Whale flips mafia, I will be more suspicious of LaserGuy. All Peaceful Whale’s reads (see his two readposts are both built on a town read of LaserGuy.

Maybe more in a bit. I want to post something for Sabrar on the small tiny miniscule possibility he glances at the forum before he goes to sleep.

Jeez I really hate when night falls on a weekend, because unlike most other people, weekends are when I have the most time to play. Weekdays are difficult for me. I hope Madge calls this tonight so I can get a day of content in because Monday is really bad for me. I don’t like putting too much in to a game at night in case I am killed but I see Sabrar quoted me again, so I owe him some entertainment.

I would really like another day to play with Hari Seldon. His method is a lot like mine. I analyze every post, picking up where I previously stopped, and copy the things that I find interesting to a word document, and make notes/questions/replies. Then I edit and post these notes in more or less chronological order. Hari does the same thing, except that he does one page at a time, and his responses are sorted by players, then chronologically. Interested to see if he comes up with anything for P3 and P4. I should have FoS’d everyone who was suspicious of Hari for the number assignments, because jimbobmacdoodle is correct here when he points out that it’s the same thing we all do when we label content with degrees of scuminess/townieness. And we also do it with content levels, like when someone is labeled scummy for low post count. Really the only thing Hari is doing different from anyone else is that he is sharing his methodology and scores. There was another player that assigned number values to people’s posts, he was a pretty good player, and no I don’t think Hari is that person.

If I’m alive on D2 I will need to respond to Maven on this, so I should be thinking about it.

bessie wrote: I don't think I can do this in 10 minutes. But I'll be thinking about this tonight, and will have an answer for you D2 if I'm here.

Hmm, Maven’s post was here, 9 and a half hours before deadline. If it was me, I would have told Maven to pound sand. He waited too long to post and expect a comprehensive answer, I was asleep when he posted, I don’t do good coherent posts in the mornings before work (just quick hits), and I don’t post from work. But Hari read Maven’s post, probably carefully because he questioned me on it, and Hari posted a good amount of content after Maven. So yes, Maven should reasonably expect Hari to answer his questions, not just what he wrote in this post.

Rereading jimbob’s post, I find a lot of disturbing content. Wow. A lot. I analyzed the entire post. I’m not going to throw it all in the Gojoe thread right now, because of there’s a lot of quotes so I would need to reformat everything and because I’m still working on it, but I just spent an hour going through jimbob’s content, and I’m quite suspicious that jimbob is mafia.

I've been knee deep in a job application this weekend, and I'm about to go shopping to escape the worst of the midday heat (ALSO ALMOND MILK IS HALF PRICE), so I think I'll be calling the night on or after the deadline because I haven't had much of a chance to write flavour.

I'm writing a supernatural romance novel, it updates the first weekend of every month. You can find it here.